Departments of Botany

The Department of Studies in Botany of the University is one of the leading Plant Science Departments in the country dedicated to teaching and research in plant and microbial sciences. The department has a well-established ‘Botanic Garden’ with separate Glass House and a Fern House with its living collections of more than 400 species of plants. The department also has ‘Museum’, which is named after N.I. Vavilov, with a collection of over 300 specimens representing all the major groups of Plant Kingdom. The ‘Herbarium’ of the department is one of the assets and many researchers have contributed for enriching the collections. It has more than 3500 plant species collections with complete descriptions and is one of the main referral centers for plant identification.

The department has strong research programs on different areas of Botany. The faculty members have successfully guided 140 Ph. D’s so far, authored 16 text books and more than 1350 research papers in national and international journals, conference volumes etc. The department has been offering specialized course in the areas like Taxonomy of Angiosperms, Medicinal Botany, Plant Biotechnology, Plant Molecular Biology, Applied Plant Pathology, Microbiology and Environmental Biology. The faculty members have rich experience in isolation and characterization of antimicrobials from plants, plant and microbial taxonomy, molecular characterization of plant and microbial diversity, molecular diagnostics of phytopathogens, and signal transduction in relation to host-pathogen interaction. Recently the department is offering one year M. Phil. course in Botany for Post M. Sc. students.

The department has been funded by the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Govt. of India under the ‘FIST Program’ and also by the University Grants Commission (UGC) under Non-SAP Program. The UGC has been supporting teaching and research under each plan period. In addition, the faculties have undertaken several individual and collaborative research projects from various agencies like, USDA, DST, UGC, ICAR, MOE&F, CSB, AICTE etc. The department has inter-disciplinary research network with international and national research institutes such as CFTRI, CSR&TI, DFRL and other sister departments of the University. The following are the programmes of the Department of Studies in Botany for the next 25 years.